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Thursday, 14 June 2012

Turning the tide against cuts

The coalition government is weak,
divided and directionless. Since George
Osborne’s unpopular budget in March, the government has been beset by a
seemingly never-ending series of problems.

When the chancellor slashed the top
rate of tax to 45p for Britain’s wealthiest, while triggering a popular backlash
over first the ‘granny tax’ and then the ‘pasty tax’ (which were symbolic of a
broader political agenda rather than major issues in their own right), he blew
apart the myth of ‘we’re all in it together’. This followed the pyrrhic victory
of pushing the Health and Social Care Bill: the Tories succeeded in turning it
into legislation, but it was widely unpopular.

There were
also damaging ‘cash for Cameron’ revelations, exposing how rich Tory party
donors gained access to the prime minister. The image of a corrupt and
out-of-touch cabinet of millionaires – serving wealthy, powerful interests –
was cemented by developments in the scandal surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s media
empire. Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, the principal focus of fresh
revelations, hasn’t been much of a shield protecting the prime minister: there
is an unmistakeable sense of the scandal going right to the top.

This mixture
of disasters for the coalition has cut its support in opinion polls. What at
first may have seemed a phase is now almost certainly a permanent decline: for
almost three months the Tories have polled in the 30-35% range, while their
junior partners the Lib Dems have made no progress whatsoever. Labour has
picked up support, largely on the back of discontent with the coalition rather
than any wave of enthusiasm for Ed Miliband or his policies.

Local
elections confirmed this picture of Tory decline, Lib Dem stagnation and
growing but unenthusiastic support for Labour as a repository for anti-cuts
sentiment. The Labour landslide on 3 May almost exactly co-incided with
elections in France, where the left-wing presidential candidate Jean-Luc
Melenchon took over 11% of the national vote (and where a key architect of
European austerity, Nicolas Sarkozy, was ousted) and Greece, where radical-left
Syriza took almost 17% of the vote in the general election.

Austerity isn’t working

It all added
up to a sense of the tide turning against the economically illiterate orthodoxy
of austerity. There could be still more dramatic developments if Syriza win
this Sunday’s re-run elections in Greece, the weakest link in the European
chain for the continent’s pro-cuts political elite.

In assessing
the struggle to defeat austerity, our starting point therefore has to be recognition
that their side is weaker than before. This is so at the European level and at
the domestic level. Continuing economic problems – the intractable Eurozone
crisis, but also the continuing stagnation of the UK economy (signified most
starkly by the announcement we are officially in a double dip recession) –
underpin a crisis of political legitimacy for the proponents of cuts and
privatisation.

There is no
reason to believe incumbent parties’ fortunes will improve, precisely because
their commitment to austerity has ensured a failure of economic recovery. In
this country, there is little doubt that Cameron – whose personal ratings have
fallen drastically – can never return to the relative strength he had prior to
the budget, cash for access revelations and Jeremy Hunt scandal.

There is also
a great deal of division and tension inside the government. There have been,
and continue to be, considerable pressure points in the fragile relationship
between Tories and Lib Dems. There has also been an outbreak of mutinous
behaviour on the Tory backbenches, with many Tory MPs bizarrely concluding from
their dire local election results that they need to become more stridently
right-wing, or focus on issues (like opposing House of Lords reform) which to
most people are marginal and of little relevance.

Nonetheless,
most coalition cuts are being pushed through successfully. The government is
wounded, unpopular, fractious – but still largely able to get its own way.
Unemployment remains high, pay is suppressed and benefits are cut, public
services are contracted out, and there is a long way to go in the
implementation of savage cuts to every aspect of public services and the
welfare state. The coalition sticks together and the official Opposition is too
often weak in opposing Tory viciousness and lukewarm in the alternative
policies it offers.

Weaknesses in the opposition

But there is
another problem: extra-parliamentary opposition remains patchy and fragmented. For
a time it looked as if public sector pensions might be a breakthrough campaign
for all those opposed to cuts. Arrogant ministers had made the mistake of
taking on large swathes of the public sector at once, uniting trade unions
around a common cause. The movement peaked on 30 November 2011, with over 2
million trade unionists taking co-ordinated strike action.

That unity
swiftly crumbled. The capitulation by leaders of Unison – by far the biggest
union in the public sector – exerted considerable pressure on the wider union
movement. Timid leadership in some unions and a failure even to pursue more
modestly co-ordinated strikes has allowed the struggle to fragment and lose
momentum.

While a
number of unions are still committed to the pensions campaign, it has sadly
become apparent that it’s unlikely to give us a much-needed victory. No clear
alternative focus has yet emerged. Pay is the most likely battleground: Tory
talk of ‘regional pay’ threatens a break-up of established national pay
bargaining, while pay restraint squeezes the living standards of millions of
workers. However, the direction in which the pensions campaign has moved has
caused some demoralisation and cynicism among union members.

There is,
nevertheless, a lot of energy in the anti-cuts movement and a widespread
determination to stop the coalition in its tracks. There are many who take
heart from election results and polls indicating the scale of disenchantment
with this government, while events elsewhere (especially Greece) promote the
feeling that austerity can be resisted.

It is clearer
than ever – to millions of people way beyond activist circles – that austerity
isn’t working and we sorely need an alternative. There is a lot of campaigning,
even if most of it is fragmented and small-scale. Victories aren’t – yet - on a
scale sufficient to shift the balance of the struggle between us and them.

20 October – an historic opportunity

In this
context the potentially massive national demonstration on 20 October– belatedly called by the TUC – takes on
special significance. It can unite the whole range of issues, groups and
campaigns in a spectacular show of strength, not only co-ordinating the unions
in a way not seen since 30 November but reaching out to involve other sections
of society. The process of building the demonstration can re-invigorate the
movement – and increase its co-ordination and unity - in a way no local or
single-issue protest can achieve.

A huge,
united national demonstration holds out the hope of re-igniting the movement to
save the NHS, potentially leading to mass campaigning to scrap the Health and
Social Care Act. But it can also be the launchpad for co-ordinated action on
issues like pay, which will require mass strike action as well as further
street protests to win.

Making this
demonstration massive must therefore be every activist’s priority. It has to be
taken as an opportunity to bring everyone in the movement together and, equally
importantly, pull in new people who sense an opportunity to decisively turn the
tide against cuts. This is about deepening and broadening the movement, not
just a single mass protest.

We do this at
a time when the dominant economic model is exposed as a failure, increasingly
contested across Europe. We confront a weakened government, disconnected from
the mass of people. This is an historic opportunity.